


Fragile Vessels

by KLessard



Series: Arctic Seasons [4]
Category: due South
Genre: Gen, Post-Call of the Wild, Realism, Siblings, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7144646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLessard/pseuds/KLessard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Constable MacKenzie recalls a fortuitous encounter with the hunter who saved her brother's life in the Yukon in 1994. An investigation into the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and corruption within the RCMP. Inspired by true events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Vessels

“ _It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones_.”  
  
I will start by quoting this scripture from the gospel of Luke because it rang particularly true to me when Sergeant Nathaniel Matthews from the Inuvik RCMP detachment quoted it two months ago. I did not know what it was from, but he showed me where to find it when I asked about it today. I have long made fun of my sergeant behind his back for his odd religiosity, but I have come to see he often has the last laugh. Sergeant Matthews attends the First Bible Baptist Church on Mackenzie Road. He is married and has two sons and a daughter whom I understand are named after Old Testament judges. He is a Southerner from Saskatchewan and was transferred to our detachment three years ago. I was raised Catholic myself. We have a beautiful church here in Inuvik they call the Igloo Church because it looks like an igloo, but its real name is Our Lady of Victory. It is the most impressive piece of architecture in these parts. Even my brother, who has travelled much and lived in Chicago, thinks it is a fine building. Sergeant Matthews’ church is a plain clapboard house with a brown cross nailed across the side, but they have no residential school blood on their hands, and I respect them for it.   
  
This has little to do with the events I will recall here, but I am not used to writing, apart from police reports. I have never been one to keep a journal and I have no literary pretension of any kind. I was personally involved in the investigation into Nellie Isaac’s disappearance last July and this is the real subject I want to tackle here. Hopefully, the verse will make sense to you by the time you are done reading this. I say I was involved, and that is in my capacity as sole female officer at the aforementioned detachment which currently consists of ten constables, a sergeant, a secretary and a sniff dog named Diefenbaker. There was an eleventh constable when these events took place, but you will see why he is no longer working with us. I say Diefenbaker is a sniff dog, but he really is a wolfdog who, for some reason, saved my brother, Benton Fraser, from drowning near Prince Rupert in 1992. Benton tamed him and he became a valuable asset to every detachment he’s worked with since. My brother is also a constable and so was our late father before us. You could say Mountie blood runs through our veins. Robert Fraser was shot in the Yukon in 1994 because of a corrupted superintendent’s scheme. I think it is relevant to expand on this family business and I will tell it like it is. My brother is really my half-brother. He is our father’s legitimate son and I was born out of wedlock eight years later which has earned me the bastard Mountie nickname I am not particularly fond of. Robert Fraser’s wife, Caroline, was murdered by a smuggler when Benton was six. A constable’s life was not really a life back then since there was no such thing as a shift, and it was impossible for my father to look after his son. He sent him to live with his grandparents who were travelling librarians and Benton became an erudite surrounded by all these books. I will speak freely of my brother because I don’t intend to show this to him, well-read as he is. I don’t think he would ridicule me because he is a very loving man and would not hurt my feelings on purpose, but I am mostly writing this to make sense of it all. While Benton Fraser received this rather unique education travelling across the North, Robert Fraser met my mother, Ellen MacKenzie, during his posting at this same Inuvik detachment. She had a cabin on the trapline and was married to a prospector named Matthew Stern. Stern died in a mine explosion, and I was born in May thirteen months later. You do the math. The flooding was pretty bad that year and my mother gave birth to me on the trapline. I won’t speak much of my mother because I have been struggling with mixed feelings about her for a little over a year now. I will only say she lied and made everyone believe I was Matthew Stern’s daughter, including me. She died of a heart attack in the winter three years ago. If you knew how often I ached for a father or a brother growing up while I had both and did not know about it…I better not get into this. Benton Fraser and I met in Chicago by some extraordinary twist of fate last year which reminds me God exists when I start doubting he does. That was back when I left on the trail of my husband’s killers (another long story) and we kept in touch. He was feeling homesick and asked for a transfer to Inuvik which was granted to him last fall. It has been a great comfort for me to have him close. So there you have it. Yes, we both have river names. Sergeant Matthews was very pleased to have a skilled officer like my brother join our detachment upon his own request and acquire a good sniff dog on top of that. He nicknamed Benton “Constable Barnabas” because he always sees felons as diamonds in the rough and tries to tap into that vein to help them mend their ways. Barnabas was that New Testament man who did the same, and trusted the repentant Apostle Paul, supporting him in his missionary work even though he’d killed a whole bunch of Christians back when he stood on the dark side. The Inuvik detachment makes for an odd assortment of officers: some of us have been assigned there for our extensive knowledge of Aboriginal cultures and the bond of trust we have established with the locals; the rest are usually Southerners who have been transferred here for various reasons, often disciplinary ones. Inuvik’s climate and social issues are challenging, and the RCMP seems to perceive our detachment as a boot camp for wayward officers. I do not like this at all, but what can you do? I have no power over it. Our senior constable is an Inuvialuit man named Ruben Alunik. He was raised in Inuvik and knows the place like the back of his hand. We get along right fine. He is tall and heavy and some of his friends call him Grizzly. I never call him that because I have realized he is self-conscious about his size. I am a small blonde woman myself, and I believe people find it funny when they see us patrolling the streets together, that’s how striking the contrast is. I will say this right away. I can fight and I am not easily intimidated. But I feel safe when Alunik is around and I also feel that way with my brother, Benton Fraser. It is a pleasant feeling I never knew growing up with a single mother, no matter how tough and resourceful she was. I mentioned I was once married. I did feel this to some extent with my husband, Casey Richmond, with whom I have lived four years before his former partners in crime, Mark and Michael Torelli, shot him to death for threatening to denounce them. He had cleaned up his act by then, but had also changed his name and hid his criminal past from me. I became so obsessed over getting justice for his death that I got myself suspended. I feel betrayed and have mixed feelings about Casey too. When you discover the two people you loved the most and trusted blindly lied to you once they are gone, it turns your world on its head. You think everything has been a lie and you don’t know who they were and who you are anymore.

But that is a lot of description and I will get to the investigation proper. It happened this way. Inuvik holds its annual Great Northern Arts Festival in July. It is a time when the Arctic experiences a phenomenon they call the midnight sun and this whole thing draws a lot of visitors and artisans from all over the place, even people from outside Canada. This means extra work and patrolling for us RCMP officers to make sure everybody is safe and parties are kept under control. Benton and I were on patrol that day and we stopped by the community greenhouse to see how well the gardens were growing and to talk to the people. That is part of building the trust. Talking is something my brother is good at and he could talk for hours. I will admit it is sometimes draining. If there is anything I look at with pride in this town, it is the community greenhouse. I am no gardener myself, but the symbolic aspect of the place is close to my heart. It was built last year when they decided to get rid of the Grollier Hall arena and use the structure for a public garden space. Now, Grollier Hall and Stringer Hall were two Church-run residential schools the government forced Aboriginal children to attend in the sixties, and you cannot imagine the kind of abuse that went on there. The schools were eventually destroyed, and this arena reconverted. Seeing lush vegetation replace the painful memories is part of the healing process for many. So Benton and I were talking to my childhood friend, Sarah Kudlak, who had a small plot of her own when I noticed a long-haired Aboriginal man looking at us from across the arena. He was listening to my brother cite a list of Latin names and smiling to himself.   
“Benton, that man’s been staring at you for a while,” I said. “Do you know him?”   
Benton looked up.  
“Great Scott! That’s the man who shot Gerrard from the mountaintop.”  
“The hunter in the Yukon?”  
Benton nodded and walked up to him.   
Gerrard is this superintendent who had our father assassinated six years ago. He also attempted to kill my brother as he was about to expose his scheme which consisted of turning a blind eye on the environmental damage caused by a lucrative power plant on the Stewart River. That hunter saw the whole thing and shot Gerrard with his rifle before he could kill Benton. I am deeply grateful to him.   
“Last I heard of you you’d gone down to Chicago,” the man said, shaking my brother’s hand.  
“Well, the dust did settle. My inspector had me transferred here in September. I’m sorry, but I never knew your name.”  
“James Isaac. My friends call me Jay.”  
“Are you here for the festival?”  
“I am. My wife Nellie’s paintings are exhibited at the complex.”  
“Are they, now? We were there just an hour ago. What paintings are these?”  
“Animals, mostly. Traditional stuff. She’s right by the door wearing a burnt orange shirt.”  
“I remember her,” I said. “You talked to her, Benton.”  
My brother introduced me and tried to sum up our odd family history which can be difficult for him because of his storytelling style. Jay Isaac just listened and nodded.  
“Benton told me he could have died had you not intervened that day,” I said. “I feel indebted to you.”   
“It was the right thing to do,” he shrugged. “…I’d heard of what you’d done with this place…I wanted to see it for myself.”   
“It certainly warms the heart,” Benton said.  
I said nothing, because it got me thinking about Grollier Hall, and I felt ashamed to be a white woman. 

We headed back to the Midnight Sun Complex as soon as our shift ended. Benton wanted to buy some art to hang on his wall and purchased a caribou painting from Nellie Isaac. The animal was drawn in a Northern Tutchone style with many intricate details. The picture’s background was entirely black and the caribou entirely red.   
“That is fitting for a Mountie,” Nellie giggled.  
I must mention Nellie Isaac is one of the most beautiful Aboriginal women I have ever seen. It is sadly one of the reasons what happened to her happened. There was something very warm about her that made you feel like she was an old friend, even if you had just met her. Her husband is rather handsome himself, and you know how the saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together.”  
  
The wind was strong enough to control the mosquito flow that night, so my brother and I put some insect repellent on and went out for a walk. The sky was full of colourful clouds as the sun entered its false setting phase to rise up right after. Diefenbaker was trotting ahead of us and stopped by Jay Isaac’s camper. Jay was roasting sausages over an open fire and Diefenbaker ran straight up to him.   
“Dienfenbaker!” Benton chided.  
But Jay laughed and shared his sausage with the wolf.   
“I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t be.”  
“Is your wife here with you?” I asked.  
“She was invited to a party near Campbell Lake. She makes friends in no time. She asked me to go but I don’t like crowds. I told her to enjoy herself and come back early.”  
“Are we a crowd?” I hesitated.  
Jay grinned. He got up, unfolded two camping chairs and invited us to join him.  
“We can’t stay too long. We’re on duty tomorrow morning.”  
I was hoping my brother would read between the lines and keep his chatter in check.  
“You want some?” Jay said, handing the sausage pack over.  
“We just had supper, thank you very much, though,” Benton answered.  
“Did you make them yourself?” I asked.  
“I did. It’s bear meat. We had them in the freezer and I’d forgotten about them.”   
“Do you hunt and trap for a living?”   
Jay nodded.  
“Did that flooding at the East Bay plant force you to move?”  
“My cabin is further north. But Nellie’s family had to. That’s when we decided to get married and she moved in with me. She’s been trying to raise awareness with that art of hers.”   
“Art can be a powerful instrument,” Benton said. “It moves hearts and minds and pushes its message in a mysterious way… In 1787, British artisan Josiah Wedgwood created a white jasper medallion featuring a black basalt relief figure of an African slave in chains. The words ‘Am I not a slave and a brother?’ surrounded the figure to underline the humanity of the black slaves and denounce the unjust, harsh treatment they were subjected to. By 1791, thousands of these medallions had been produced and distributed, and had a significant influence on the public’s opinion of slavery. Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson admitted that: ‘Fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom.’”  
“We appreciate you taking a stand and denouncing the cover-up,” Jay said. “Even though nothing much came of it for the fish and the caribou. There is some flooding happening close to people’s homes still, but the government keeps saying it’s a natural occurrence and has little to do with the power plant.”   
“Don’t lose heart, Jay. Things can get better, even when it looks hopeless and rotten to the bone. In Wedgwood’s days, slavery was a major pillar in the economy, child labour was rampant and animal cruelty was widely accepted. When humanity reaches a low, we might be tempted to think this is the end, and things can never get better. Yet, social reforms brought about by handfuls of righteous men changed the course of history, and we now look back in awe at how this wickedness was tolerated at all. I am confident that if we persevere, the government’s attitude _will_ change.”   
“If you say so,” Jay Isaac replied, with some skepticism.  
Grandfather Fraser’s library sure filled my brother’s head with all sorts of romantic ideas. Our grandmother, Martha, had made up her mind to turn him into a chivalrous man, and I believe she succeeded. I hear there was also this Anglican minister who fed my brother Frank Capra movies growing up, and that had a lasting influence on his understanding of life. Don’t get me wrong. I admire Benton’s determination to attain the greater good, but his idealism makes him naïve at times. Ideas and reality get muddled in his head. I prefer to be on my guard. My impression is that this Liberal government will tell you whatever you want to hear but do what suits it best or do nothing at all in the end. It is a big mask show and I do not fall for masquerades. The reason the Canadian people keeps voting for those money-dilapidating actors is one of life’s mysteries. And to think Southerners are making decisions for us up North when they haven't got the slightest idea what is really going on makes my blood boil. Still, it is strangely uplifting to listen to someone like Benton Fraser when you think everything is going down the drain. People like him exist for a reason.   
  
The wind was blowing smoke in my face and I moved my chair to the right. I soon discovered Jay Isaac was a man of few words. He paid close attention and his perceptive eyes displayed great intelligence, but he only graced you with a few sharp replies to keep the conversation going. Benton did most of the talking. He ended up feeling bad about it, so he tried to get us involved. It did not work out as he wished. It was getting late, and I really wanted to use the short-lived twilight to help me get to sleep before the sun started shining its bright polar day face at us at four in the morning. We said goodbye and headed back home. 

We met some children running outside on the way. You can’t blame them for being up so late with the sun playing tricks on their sense of time.  
“It’s past eleven, kids,” I said.   
They all froze and stared quietly. A shy girl ran straight home and Benton chuckled.  
“You sure know how to inspire fear of authority,” he whispered. “They recognize you, even without the uniform.”  
I am not certain the children’s fear solely came from their associating me with the RCMP or my five-year-old goddaughter, Aluki Kudlak, repeatedly threatening the neighbourhood’s naughty kids to call me so I could “put the cuffs on them.” 

I found over twenty mosquitoes waiting for me in my room that night. Those nasty suckers will find their way in, even when you are careful to keep your doors and windows shut at all times. I went on a killing spree and it was past one o’clock when I finally managed to get some sleep. 

I did not expect to see much of Jay or Nellie Isaac after that. But Jay showed up at the detachment a quarter after ten the following morning. I greeted him with a smile and soon noticed his long face and tired eyes.   
“Hi Jay. What brings you here?” I asked.   
“…Nellie never came back from the party last night.”   
“What?”  
“I asked everyone at the complex and nobody’s seen her. The girl who gave her a ride to Campbell Lake said she looked for her at the end of the night and didn’t find her. She assumed she’d left with someone else and went on home.”   
Benton and Alunik joined us and had Jay file a missing person report. They tried to reassure him, saying his wife had possibly had too much to drink and whoever had given her a ride had also offered her a warm bed to sleep in. We opened an investigation and promised to keep in touch. One of the festival’s photographers had taken a few good shots of Nellie and we used one of his pictures for our posters. We insisted on Nellie’s orange shirt, and we were pretty sure she would soon be found if she was still wearing such conspicuous clothing. Jay was relieved and left to continue his search. It was almost noon when two young women arrived at the detachment with a disturbing lead that screamed out foul play. They were local drum dancers who had struck up a friendship with Nellie during the festival.   
“We saw something we think you should know about,” the eldest girl said. “Nellie was speaking to a guy named Rudy Ayak last night and he started harassing her. She tried to shoo him off and walked away, but he kept following her around. He kissed her and pulled her arm. I saw them head towards the bush. That’s the last I saw of Nellie last night.”  
“Were there any drugs or alcohol involved?” Benton asked.  
“Rudy was drunk. He couldn’t think straight. And he’s a hard one to read, you never know what’s in his head, you know? Nellie had had a few beers for sure. I don’t think she was all there either.”  
“Does Rudy live here in Inuvik?”  
“Yes, he was in my class,” the youngest girl said. “He works at the grocery store.”   
“Was Rudy seen at the party later?”  
“I saw him passed out in a corner, yes.”   
The notion of Nellie Isaac being lost in the bush became very real as well as the possibility of her body lying cold and lifeless in a ditch. Constable Alunik organized a search party and Jay joined us on our way to Campbell Lake some twenty kilometres southeast of Inuvik. We asked him to bring a piece of his wife’s clothing so Diefenbaker could recognize her smell and put his snout to good use. Benton, our colleague Don Clark and I were part of the team, along with fourteen volunteers who knew the camping grounds rather well. Constable Clark brought two men with him in the patrol vessel to cruise the waters. The campground is far enough from the lake, but you never know what is in a drunken person’s mind, and a drunken person running away from an assailant at that. The rest of us explored the surrounding wilderness with Diefenbaker giving it all he’d got. That wolf meant business. Jay kept quiet, but you could read the distress in his face. He called out his wife’s name from time to time and would choke up every time. Empathy is not particularly natural to me, but I could relate to Jay’s pain because I had felt the same when my husband never returned home one night and was found dead on a snow bank two days later. As a hunter, I knew Jay should have been attentive to unusual tracks or broken branches, but he was in a haze and just followed the group, relying on us to notice these things for him. Benton Fraser is a good tracker and I knew he would not let anything slip by. He once managed to get a Chicago Triad leader arrested by tasting gunpowder on his nail clippings.  
We had been searching the woods for twenty minutes when Constable Alunik called me on my radio:  
“Constable MacKenzie?”  
“Yes?”  
“I need you at the detachment. Are you with the search party?”  
“I am. Nothing so far. We’re in the bush and I sure hope Nellie Isaac isn’t. Bugs would have carried her away by now. Black flies are having a party of their own down here.”  
“We got that suspect in custody, Rudy Ayak… Constable Lacasse is trying to bully a story out of him and I don’t like his methods. I need to know if Ayak is telling the truth.”  
“All right, I’m on my way.”  
  
I ran back to the campground and drove into town. You might be wondering why Constable Alunik needed my input in particular, and the story goes as follow. When I joined the Inuvik detachment in 1994, Alunik noticed my uncanny ability to tell when suspects and witnesses were lying or hiding some key information from us. During an investigation into a bootlegging operation in 1997, I was the only officer who managed to see through our suspect’s scheme after throwing some questions at him. The alcohol had been concealed in white juice jugs and we intercepted the shipment right before it made its way to Fort McPherson that day. Alunik examined my overall performance. He noted a 99.4% accuracy level and has been entrusting me with tricky suspects since. 

I joined Alunik behind the one-way mirror and listened to Lacasse intimidate Rudy Ayak as you would a rotten piece of fish:  
“You don’t remember, hein? I’m not a fool. I see exactly what ‘appened. You were so drunk and so ‘igh you raped that girl, you killed her and you went to ‘ide her in a shallow grave. And you don’t even remember it.”  
“I didn’t hurt her, I swear!” Ayak cried.  
“You went back to the party ni vu ni connu and you thought we wouldn’t find out?”  
Ayak was on the verge of tears. He had no criminal record and Lacasse’s insistence was inappropriate at best. Now, Constable Lacasse is one of those officers who had been transferred to the Inuvik detachment for misconduct. I did not know the particulars at the time. One thing we had all discovered, though, is that he hated Aboriginal people to a high degree. Having Alunik as his superior was a big blow for him, and we all felt he’d been sent to us so we could cure him off his racism. He was originally from Val-d’Or, Quebec and spoke broken English which did not help establish his credibility in the community.   
  
Alunik ordered Lacasse to leave and introduced me to our suspect. Rudy Ayak was an Inuvialuk in his early twenties. I did not know what his attitude was like when they had arrested him, but Lacasse had broken him by then and I wondered if this would help us or not. I had the strange impression I was playing good cop in the good cop / bad cop dynamic which is usually the other way around with my brother who is more compassionate than I am. I have come to see that Benton Fraser’s passion for justice stems from his desire to protect the little guy, while getting the bad guy is more my thing. I sat across the table from Ayak and here is what I read in his face: _There is no justice here_. I refused to let him get away with that belief.   
“Don’t worry, Rudy, I won’t try to make you admit to a crime you didn’t commit,” I said. “Can I call you Rudy?”   
He nodded but hesitated to look me in the eye. This could be a sign that someone is lying, but in this case, I knew it was confusion. He was humiliated and had given up hope to be treated fairly. He eventually grew comfortable enough to look up and I believe he recognized me. He was only a few years younger than me and we had often seen each other in school growing up.   
“I just want to get the facts straight.”   
“I didn’t lie to that man.”  
“I don’t think you’re a liar. But you’re the last person who spoke to Nellie Isaac before she went missing and you probably have information we badly need.”  
“I wouldn’t want anything bad to have happened to her because of me.”  
“Has something bad happened?”  
“I don’t know!”  
“I know you were drunk and it might be a blur, but could you describe your interaction with Nellie Isaac to the best of your ability? What was it like?”  
“…She was really nice to me at first…She saw me sitting there by myself. She smiled and came to talk to me. I suppose she felt sorry for me. I was drunk and I wanted to think she meant it.”  
“Romantically, you mean?”  
Rudy Ayak looked down and blushed.   
“Did she tell you she was married?”   
“She did later.”  
“What did you talk about? Did she have intentions of going anywhere?”  
“I don’t think she did, no. She told me about her artwork and her home in the Yukon. She asked me what my plans were. I didn’t have much to say about that.”    
“We have two witnesses who saw you follow her around and hold her back when she tried to get away from you. What happened there?”   
Ayak looked down once more.  
“I was drunk; I didn’t mean to hurt her.”  
“Our witnesses saw you kiss her.”  
“She told me she was married then. I insisted and she got angry. She walked away and yelled at me. I followed her for a while and then returned to the campground. I drank some more and I don’t remember anything after that.”  
“She was not seen again. Did she head deeper into the bush?”   
“Seems to me she was heading for the highway.”  
I stared intensely at this point because that affirmation could only be the clean truth or a dirty lie. I gently laid my fingers on his right wrist and took his pulse. Ayak was puzzled at this, but nothing indicated he was lying; all I could see was a miserable man ashamed of his drunken behaviour. There was a lot of fear in his eyes, and the way I understood it, he hadn’t known until then that something like this could get him into such trouble. I also think he felt genuine remorse for the impact his actions had had on Nellie Isaac’s present situation.   
  
I left the interrogation room. Lacasse and Alunik awaited me behind the glass.  
“I don’t believe he hurt her,” I said. “He did harass her and admitted to it, but he let her go when she told him to get lost. She was kind of drunk herself and might have wandered into the bush trying to get away from him. Or she might have decided to hitchhike her way back to town only to fall into the hands of a true predator.”  
Lacasse turned pale when I suggested this.   
“It might not be foul play after all,” Alunik replied.  
“You really believe this crap?” Lacasse snapped.   
“Shut up, Lacasse…I suppose the possibility of an attack by a wild animal is also worth considering.”  
  
While I was away at the detachment, Diefenbaker picked up a trail and led Benton to the Dempster Highway. They were a fifteen minutes’ walk from the campground when my brother spotted a tiny blue bead in the gravel.   
“Did you find something?” Jay asked.   
“Does this look familiar to you?”  
Jay examined the object.   
“There was some beadwork on Nellie’s skirt… I suppose some of the stitches might have come undone as she walked through the brush…”  
They kept looking and found a few more along the shoulder.   
“She came all this way,” Benton said. “If someone offered her a ride and didn’t bring her back to you, she could be anywhere at this point…”  
Benton told me he immediately felt he should not have spoken his mind because it made the situation look hopeless and laid a heavier load on Jay who was already weighed down. Alunik informed the search party about Rudy Ayak’s testimony. The party explored Campbell Lake until the end of Clark and Benton’s shift. Diefenbaker was tired and could not smell much of anything anymore. Alunik suggested they get back to town until a new lead showed us where to look. We had to rely on the general population to spot Nellie and call us at this point. I was at the detachment when Benton returned. He waved a little plastic bag at me.  
“You got those beads in there?”  
Benton nodded and let me have a look at them.  
“How far from the campground?”  
“About a mile.”  
“Sure seems to confirm Rudy Ayak’s impression…Where’s Jay?”   
“He went back to his camper. He’s exhausted in every possible way. He barely slept last night.”   
Lacasse came up behind us asking to see the evidence for himself.   
“And what is this supposed to be?”  
“Beads,” Benton answered. “The kind used by Northern Tutchone women in their traditional beadwork. This was part of a flower pattern sewn on Nellie Isaac’s skirt.”   
Lacasse snickered.  
“You’re not serious. There’s so many freaking Indians in town these days! What makes you think this is hers?”  
Benton and I frowned, knowing he would have never dared to talk about Aboriginal people in this fashion in front of Ruben Alunik. We’d had to insist on Lacasse using the word “freaking” instead of another similar-sounding word because of how offensive it is to our culture. He did not understand it at first. He said it is commonly used in Quebec and no one bats an eye.   
“Her husband recognized them,” Benton said.  
“How can you recognize a thing like that?”   
“Do you have a problem, Lacasse? You’re not being helpful,” I said.  
I was truly irritated to see this incompetent constable sneer at my brother’s discovery; he made Benton’s stunning sense of observation look silly.   
“Yes, I have a problem. My problem is that you let that suspect go.”   
Lacasse had been a ball and chain to all of us since his arrival in Inuvik, but his attitude was plain irrational regarding this case. I think he disliked the way I stared and tried to read his intentions, because he walked away right there.   
“I can’t stand him,” I muttered.  
Benton kept his mouth shut. He can show remarkable self-control when it comes to impatience. Which doesn’t mean you can’t detect it in his face. We left the detachment and saw Lacasse at the wheel of one of our patrol cars looking around as if he’d lost something he desperately needed to find in there. 

I went home but could not get much rest knowing Nellie Isaac was either battling it out with black bears and insect swarms or sequestrated by an abductor we had no information about. It is one thing to fight crime all day and punch out when you know the victims are safe, but quite another when there is a missing person in pain out there. Some say you must learn to disconnect. I can’t. Some have thrown the phrase “task-oriented” at me. They did not mean it as a compliment. But no, I felt a personal connection to Jay Isaac, it wasn’t about a task or even my sense of duty. I owed him something for the good he had done to us. What anguish he must feel if I felt bad myself! I called my friend Sarah who is very religious and asked her to pray for Jay and Nellie Isaac. She said she already was. As for Sergeant Matthews, he once told me he prays for every single one of his constables and for the cases we are working on. Sometimes things get bad and he takes it down to his clapboard church on Wednesday nights and there is praying going on as if our lives depended on it. I have come to consider them my back-up team. Weird things happen when they get on their knees like that. In a good way.  
  
The search party gathered once more early the next day and we picked up where we’d left off. It is heartening to see a community invest so much effort and compassion into rescuing a single individual, even someone they don’t know very well. Alunik called Nellie Isaac’s family to ask if she had tried to contact them. She had not. Had she been in touch with any shady friend or acquaintance in recent weeks? There were none they could think of. Jay neither. Nellie’s relatives were worried sick and planning to come to Inuvik to join the search party. Jay was encouraged to hear the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association was on its way to fly over the area and would be in town in the morning. I was glad to see his face light up. My belief was that Nellie had been abducted, but no one wants to be a killjoy. We were increasingly concerned, as the first forty-eight hours which are crucial in a missing person case were closing in on us, and we had no new lead to show us the way. 

I was off duty the following day and awoke to the news that two hikers had found Nellie Isaac in the bush southeast of town, just a few kilometres away from my trailer. She had a sprained ankle, was badly dehydrated and covered in insect bites. She was alive but barely. Emergency services rushed her to the hospital and saw to her needs. We were all profoundly relieved to hear she would make it and had not been attacked by a wild animal. We were also eager to hear what had happened from the horse’s mouth and hoped she would soon regain consciousness.   
  
The day was sunny and dry. I grabbed my bug jacket and went strawberry picking. I had brought two small buckets and filled them to the brim. I discovered that spot last year. It is a mighty good spot, but mosquitoes will be after you like a hungry wolverine. I could hear them tapping against the hood as loud as raindrops on a window pane. When I headed back home, old Ruth Tingmiak saw me walk by and waved at me. She is eighty-four but perfectly lucid. She was sitting on her trailer porch soaking up the sun.    
“What have you got there, Maggie?” she asked.  
“Wild strawberries.”  
“Lucky you! I wish I could still go berry picking, but my joints are too stiff to kneel.”  
“Help yourself,” I said, offering her some.   
We ate a few handfuls and Ruth got me talking about Nellie Isaac’s ordeal.   
“I hear they found that girl with the orange shirt. Do you know how she’s doing?”  
“She’s going to be fine, Ruthie, don’t worry. They’re taking good care of her at the hospital and her husband is right there by her side.”  
“Are you going to arrest her?” she asked.  
I was befuddled, to say the least.   
“Arrest her? She’s not a criminal, Ruth, she’s a victim. She went missing. She didn’t do anything wrong.”   
“No? Why was one of you Mounties chasing after her that night? I saw him follow her into the bush. I thought he was trying to arrest her.”   
“Are you sure that was Nellie Isaac, Ruth?”  
“My eyesight isn’t all it used to be, but I can tell an orange shirt when I see one.”  
“Ruth, if you saw something that night, you need to come forward about it.”   
“Well, I heard screaming. It woke me up and I looked out the window. That girl jumped out of one of your police cars and ran away. That Mountie was after her and I don’t know what happened after. I figured she’d escaped him when I heard she’d gone missing.”   
“I didn’t hear about any of this. Which officer was that?”   
“It was one of those Southerners. I think it was the French guy.”  
“Constable Lacasse? He was on patrol that night.”  
“I don’t know his name.”   
  
I drove into town and parked by my brother’s house on Breynat. His shift had just ended and he was sitting on a chair looking at Nellie Isaac’s painting on the wall.  
“Benton, I need to talk to you,” I said.  
He sat up all ears because he’s usually the one doing the talking and pestering me to tell him what I’m thinking even when I have nothing particular to say.   
“There’s a new witness in Nellie Isaac’s case. I just spoke to her this afternoon. Remember Ruth Tingmiak who lives in a trailer southeast of town with her son and daughter-in-law?”  
“Yes.”  
“Ruth saw what happened to Nellie from her bedroom window that night. She heard a woman screaming and saw her step out of a patrol car. She recognized Nellie’s orange shirt and said she was running away into the bush with a Mountie on her heels. That Mountie could only be Lacasse.”  
“Lacasse?”  
“I told you he’d been acting strange lately. I’m sure he was looking for lost beads on the car seat that day. He wanted to suppress evidence. The way I understand it, Nellie was walking away from the party and heading to town after Ayak harassed her. Lacasse saw her and offered her a ride; she trusted him, he was a policeman. He tried to force himself onto her, she ran away, hurt her ankle and got stuck in the bush.”  
“Maggie, that’s a serious accusation you’re making.”   
“…There’s more. One night, I was on the evening shift with Lacasse and we were alone at the detachment. He forcibly kissed me on the neck and touched me on my private parts. He would have gone farther if I hadn’t stopped him.”   
“What?”  
“I gave him a good punch; I knocked the wind right out of him. He understood what I was about and left me alone after that.”   
“Maggie, why didn’t you tell me about this?”  
“It happened before you moved back here.”   
“Was he disciplined for it?”   
“I didn’t report it. That was right after my suspension. I’d just been reinstated and I didn’t want any more trouble. I didn’t think it would escalate to this.”  
“He took advantage of you and you just let him?”   
“You honestly think reporting it would have made a difference? Or done any good at all? You know how common this is…Women are not taken seriously in the Force. We have to earn our spurs. And even then. This could have easily ruined my career and labelled me as a complainer. Lacasse would have gotten away with it; he would have been transferred again and pursued his dirty business elsewhere. This is how they handle these things. You just don’t show the RCMP’s ugly side. Must I remind you why you had to spend the last five years in Chicago?”  
“Has this happened to you before?”  
“Let’s say Lacasse was much bolder than the others.”   
Benton was pale with wrath. You would think that people get red in the face when they’re angry, but no, he was white, white and indignant. I didn’t know what was happening to him, I didn’t know if it was because of Nellie Isaac, because of me or because his ideals had been shaken, but he got up and headed straight for the door.   
“Benton, don’t do anything stupid,” I said.  
I never thought I would have to say this to my brother because he is usually calm and level-headed, but that’s how changed he was.  
  
I followed him outside. Benton’s house is only a few minutes’ walk from the detachment, and when we got there, Jay Isaac was engaged in a discussion with Sergeant Matthews and Constable Alunik; his wife was well enough to talk and had told him about the assault. You can see how volatile the situation was.   
“He offered her a hundred dollars to do it and tried to rape her when she refused! He pursued her and God knows what he would have done to her if she hadn’t run and hid from him.”  
“Did she describe the officer?”  
“She said he had a French accent.”   
Lacasse was on the phone working at his desk and did not see it coming. As soon as he hung up, Benton grabbed him and pinned him against the wall with an arm under his jaw.  
“It’s all over; we have a witness, Lacasse. And I know what you did to my sister, you creep.”   
“What did he do to her?” Alunik asked.  
“Same thing he did to Nellie Isaac. Only, Maggie fought back.”  
Alunik turned to me.  
“When did this happen, MacKenzie?”  
“Last year in May.”  
“And you didn’t tell us?”   
I suddenly became the centre of attention and wished I could disappear.   
“Is this the kind of mentality you cultivate in this detachment, Sergeant?” Benton said. “If a female officer gets assaulted, she’s better off keeping quiet about it?”   
“Certainly not!”  
I thought Sergeant Matthews and Alunik would try to intervene and tell my brother to let go, but they just watched, astounded. Constable Lacasse’s face was ashen. Perhaps he’d been under the impression he would get another transfer and manage to leave this “Indian town” he hated so much. He now had to acknowledge his defeat. He did not struggle one bit but looked terrified when Alunik came forward and bent down to look him in the eye.   
“You knew where to look all this time, Lacasse? You would have been relieved to hear she was dead, wouldn’t you?”  
Ruben Alunik could pulverize a man with a fist if he wanted to, but he knows how to restrain himself. He took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and recited the arrest caution.   
“‘Be sure your sin will find you out,’” Sergeant Matthews quoted as Alunik led Lacasse to the cell block.   
It is hard to tell what was in Sergeant Matthews’ mind at this point, but my impression is that he was sad, irritated and embarrassed for the RCMP all at the same time. He took me aside and said:   
“MacKenzie, did I ever give you the impression you should keep something like this to yourself?”   
“No, not you in particular.”  
“Then who?”  
“Our previous Staff Sergeant. The culture. Trying to keep up appearances. I felt it would make matters worse for me.”   
“I don’t care for appearances, MacKenzie. I care about the truth. Lacasse had been transferred here for sexual misconduct. One more stain on his record and he would have been removed from duty. Had you reported it, we could have prevented what happened to Nellie Isaac.”

Did you ever feel like your interlocutor’s tone was compassionate and accusatory at once? It’s terribly confusing. But you always feel bad and guilty in the end.

I hung my head and cried myself silly. I think Benton felt sorry for me as you would for an abuse victim, like he wanted to protect me, you know? He was holding me tight and he didn’t understand it at all. I did not feel sorry for myself. I cried out of anger and despair. That fool Lacasse had just about broken everything we had worked so hard to build, had taken away the little trust we had managed to instill in the community. Jay Isaac had gotten a double dose of the RCMP’s corruption with that cover-up in the Yukon and again with a perverse officer who’d nearly had his wife killed. I felt very low and was ashamed to look at him. I assume he was disgusted and hoping he would never have to deal with us again.  
   
Sergeant Matthews sent us home and told my brother to look after me. I’m not sure what he meant by that exactly. We walked back to Benton’s house and he asked if I wanted to go home or have supper with him and talk. This whole thing weighed so heavy on me it made me dizzy and I did not want to deal with it on my own. Benton made sandwiches and we had a light meal. I was not hungry at all but forced it down anyway. Sometimes, your body needs fuel and you can think more clearly afterwards. We did not talk much at first. I did not know what to say, but he respected it and kept quiet too. My conscience was on fire and I needed to set things straight.   
“What are you thinking about?” Benton asked, after he had poured us some tea.  
“…Is it my fault?” I mumbled.  
“What is?”  
“What happened to Nellie Isaac…I didn’t report what Lacasse did to me. I neglected my duty for selfish reasons. I wasn’t thinking of what he might do to others.”  
“Maggie, Lacasse knows the law. He had no business assaulting anyone. You can’t blame yourself for this.”  
“Sergeant Matthews does.”  
“He’s not one to rub salt into the wound. That’s not what he meant… Why didn’t you call me when Lacasse assaulted you that night? You knew me by then.”   
“I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it.”  
“I’m always afraid you’re keeping something like this to yourself. I hate to see you break apart when it comes out.”   
“I don’t know how to verbalize such things, Benton. Anyhow, I doubt anyone would dare to do anything like this again with you around. But it’s all about to hit the fan. This will be on the news. We’ll have to build people’s trust from scratch all over again. Sometimes, I think I should just get back to the bush and go trapping like my mother. It’s a sinking ship.”  
“Maggie, you can’t do this. You’re one of the few officers who really know what they’re doing in this town. You understand the people, you understand their needs. They know who they can trust. They won’t just throw the baby away with the bathwater.”  
“I’m not so sure. Trust is a fragile thing.”   
There are moments when life looks bleak, and this was one of them for me. I felt lonely. You will say my brother was right in front of me and I was not alone. Well, there was something looming over that had been pushing me down a mosquito-infested swamp of dark gloom from time to time; I badly needed to tell Benton about it because I did not know what his thinking on the matter was. You see, the prospect of either of us getting transferred to a new detachment is one that leaves me crestfallen. The RCMP could decide to send me to Vancouver (God forbid, I hate cities!) and Benton to Newfoundland. We have little control over this sort of thing. You will ask why I became a constable in the first place if this is part of the job. I suppose I was young and foolish and had only my career to think about at the time. I had been trying to keep my brother and my feelings at arm’s length ever since it hit me like a ton of bricks. Attempting to put this into words made me tear up again.  
“Maggie, what is it?” Benton asked.  
“Benton, I can’t bear to think that sooner or later, one of us will get transferred and we’ll be apart.”  
I cried some more and my brother cried too. I could tell it was a different feeling he had than me, though.   
“I didn’t know you cared that much,” he said. “I wouldn’t just leave, Maggie.”  
“There’s nothing we can do about it.”   
He said we would think of something. He said we could plan ahead and both request a transfer to an isolated detachment where no one wants to go anyway. Paulatuk, Lutsel K’e, Grise Fiord or Pond Inlet, maybe. He said if things got real bad, we could get into that trapping business together. I said that would suit me just fine.   
  
Sergeant Matthews called me to his office a few days later and stressed how harassment would not be tolerated in his detachment; if anything like what Lacasse had done should happen again, I was to report it at once. I said I still felt uneasy about how higher authorities would handle the issue, but I appreciated his integrity. He answered he could not give the enemies of the Lord an occasion to blaspheme, whatever that means.   
  
If you are under the impression I was to blame for Nellie Isaac’s ordeal, I will only say this in my defence: pressing charges and dealing with a trial would have been too heavy for me to bear at the time. Sometimes, you know you have reached your breaking point, and all you can do is say: “I don’t need this right now,” and ignore it. I was still reeling from Casey’s murder, the Torelli trial, learning that my mother and my husband had lied to me, and getting used to my new identity as a bastard Mountie. I think my brother saw right through me when he said Lacasse had taken advantage of me. Predators always seek the weaker prey. It consoles me to remember his words when I feel guilty about this.   
It did torment me for a while, though. Benton had kept Nellie Isaac’s business card and I found the courage to write and apologize to her. She was puzzled. She did not want me to feel guilty and told me Jay was feeling guilty himself for failing to protect her or something. It was all very odd but it made me feel better somehow. But who should be watching out to protect their wives from the police? That’s how broken the RCMP is. 

We had our first snowfall today. It is three degrees below outside and the view from my kitchen window is back to its usual self of white, blue and grey.  
  
It has been a full year since Benton Fraser moved back here to Inuvik. I have given the Force another chance. Benton is as optimistic as ever. He says good seed bears good fruit and we must keep planting. That good men must hold on even if all they get is scorn at first; otherwise we’d soon be swallowed up by corruption. I don’t know if I am a good man or woman for that matter, I certainly don’t have the kind of energy and perseverance my brother seems to have in the face of adversity although I think I once did. I sometimes wonder if Benton’s thinking is sound at all and if there really is a possibility for progress ahead. I asked Sergeant Matthews about it once. He doesn’t hold much hope for change himself because man is what he is, a sinner, he says, and “there is no new thing under the sun.” His eyes are fixed on what he calls the recompense of reward which has something to do with God making all things new in the end. But he says we must still be good stewards of what has been entrusted to us and that we do get to reap benefits in this life. There _are_ years of grace, he says. 

 

 

 


End file.
